On Friday, December 10th, we were up at dawn as usual, and we trekked along a better road to Berani. When we were outside the town, halting for a few minutes, I found the men talking excitedly, and I discovered that they were very angry with Sandford and Merton. This couple, on the pretext of going on ahead, to procure bread and hay, had left us on the morning of the Arnaut scare, had taken with them the Government money, and had not returned. We had elected another commissaire, and J. G. was acting as treasurer, and using our own money. The men knew that many soldiers from other columns had deserted. To avoid evils of which they knew--hunger, weariness, discomfort and home-sickness--they had flown to others of which they knew nothing, and I guessed that our men might argue, that if now the superior Sandford and Merton had also thought it wise to desert----. But I reminded them that there would be no Serbian homes to go to, unless the Serbian Army was preserved. The longest way round was the shortest way home. "For the sake of your own people, and your own land, you must," I told them, "march bravely forward now." "Your own people, your own land!" The words came glibly enough, though I knew that they would hack, like a sword with jagged edges, at the hearts of those dead living men. But it was my duty to keep them with us to the end, wherever and whatever that end might be. And then, by a coincidence, Sandford and Merton at that moment reappeared. I asked them sternly where they had been, and they replied with a naïve frankness which disarmed me: "We were afraid of the Arnauts, and we ran away, to get quickly to Berani; we thought we should be safer there." Comment was useless: we are not all born heroes. But had they, I asked, at least, during their time in Berani, secured bread and hay for men and cattle? I braced myself for the inevitable answer, but when the poisonous words exuded, dropping soft and pulpy into the mud in which the men stood, "Hleba nema" (bread, none), "Ceno nema" (hay, none), "Y Berani, nema nishta" (in Berani, nothing at all), I wished I had been born in Whitechapel. Piety was out of place. But I was pious, and I told them to go back to the town and try again; Vooitch and I should also go there to secure what they would try for.